May 2008

What’s Your Permanent Age?

Here’s a fun question to ask people after a few drinks: What’s your permanent age?

I’ve observed that everyone has a permanent age that appears to be set at birth. For example, I’ve always been 42-years old. I was ill-suited for being a little kid, and didn’t enjoy most kid activities. By first grade I knew I wanted to be an adult, with an established career, car, house and a decent tennis game. I didn’t care for my awkward and unsettled twenties. And I’m not looking forward to the rocking chair. If I could be one age forever, it would be 42.

When I ask people about their permanent age, they usually beg it off by saying they don’t have one. But if you press, you always get an answer. And the age they pick won’t surprise you. Some people are kids all their lives. They will admit they are 12-years old. Other people have always had senior citizen interests and perspectives. If you’re 30-years old in nominal terms, but you love bingo and you think kids should stop wearing those big baggy pants and listening to hip-hop music, your permanent age might be 60.

Another way to divide people is by asking if they live in the present or the future. I live in the future. I don’t dwell on the past. I’m always thinking about what’s next. When I sit down for a movie – no matter how much I expect to like it – I always look at my watch and imagine it being over. My mood is mostly determined by my expectations of how tomorrow will be. This works for me because I’m an optimist, and the future can’t disappoint me in the present.

Other people live in the moment. If today isn’t just right, they believe today is a bad day. Tomorrow is too far away to influence how they feel today. That’s a good point of view as long as today is going well.

Some people are locked in the past; it sneaks into all of their conversations and colors their perceptions more than it should. They spend their lives either consciously or unconsciously trying to turn the future into the past. They tend to be unhappy.

Comments

I am in my mid 30's and life is getting faster than I could imagine. And yes, I can feel a big difference between 20's and 30's, especially the energy level. I used to be able to stay up for the whole night, but now, I really need my 8 hrs sleep to be able to cope the next day (or to look good). Oh dear!!!

My best permanent age would be 24, a new beginning of life. Full of ambitions for the society and future!

I'm 30 and always have been. I love to follow politics and did even as a kid. I watch the news incessantly and keep track of international events, but I also like to whoop it up at a dance club, go hiking in the woods, and hang with my friends. I skipped most of the normal teenage and 20s activities and went straight for the things a 30 year old would do.

I'm actually 18 but till now i can safely say my permanent age is 13.. actually just a kid but one who thinkis she's all grown up.. and enjoys taking advantage of what both sides have to offer...

Live too much in the past and in the future at the same time.. whatever it is, definitely not inthe present.. almost distressingly so... keep muddling my head up about what happened then and what will happen later.. yeesh..

I'd say I'm in my mid-twenties. (Actually 38) I've always lived too far in the future. Now I'm 38 and I haven't done anything to get my career/finances where I should be or thought I would be by 38. So much potential wasted living in the future. Procrastination is a hell-of-a-drug.

When I was 41 (last year) I was convinced for the whole time I was 42, as if I was waiting for something to happen. When I was in my late teens I felt like I was in my early twenties. When I was in my mid teens I wished I was a pre-teen, until I got my first Fender Stratocaster. There are no conclusions here, just observations that my analyst makes a living out of.

I think I'm permanently 38, if we're going with the time in our lives where we feel the most comfortable with ourselves.

Definitely future oriented too - so much so that I would one day like to be able to use time travel to bring my 20 year-old self into the future and transplant my present-day brain into my younger body. That way I can enjoy all the advatages of being young and energetic, without all that "troubled 20's" nonsense to slow me down.

Is it really possible to know your permanent age without having lived it?

I've always felt myself to be older than I am. When I was in grammer school I felt older. In high school I felt older. In early work history I was planning my retirement. Now (almost retired) I'm still not caught up to myself. Maybe 101.

I am 41 years old, but I have always said I feel like a very well-rounded, urbane 27-year-old. And I have felt that way since I turned about 33.

I still go out in the evenings way too much compared to my peers, whom have all settled down, grown fat, and burdened with children and all their responsibilities. My old girlfriend wanted that life; I couldn't see the point. Or why anyone would willingly choose that lifestyle. Doing the minivan-life just isn't interesting, no matter how much one may try to defend it.

I enjoy classical and modern music, collecting antique furniture or machines, reading history books, and coming across the next interesting project (a 1980s pinball machine restoration is coming up. I get to learn circuit board repair!) And I am joining the Catholic Church in a week.

Perhaps someday I will settle down like my peers, but I really don't want to. I just don't see the attraction. Perhaps my fellow 41-year-olds do it out of fear; I'm glad I'm not that way.

Now if I can only find that Kate Beckinsale-like girlfriend who shares such a complementary series of thoughts. Yeah, right...dream on and enjoy that pinball machine, pal. ;)

Quite seriously, one of my favorite books is Slaughterhouse 5, because I feel like Billy Pilgrim. Billy's consciousness is unhinged, and his stream of consciousness travels back and forth in time. One moment he is a prisoner of war in WWII, another he is previewing his death decades later, then back to his suburban house years before. (I think. In truth I don't recall many scenes of the book. Maybe I haven't read it yet). I have trouble recalling what season and year I'm currently living in, when bills are due, how long I've been married. When people ask how long I've been married, I usually sayg "We're newlyweds" because that's how I always feel.

I'm a gradually-more-perfected 21 year old. Past the college drinking, not as smart as I was when I was eighteen, close enough to the teen years to feel occasional hopelessness and suicidal thoughts. My doctorate in theoretical physics still makes me feel cocky, like I'm some kind of prodigy. Still feeling unsettled and restless, despite being happily married for 18 years, with two kids. I think my wife, chronologically five years younger, has always been about 32. The difference in maturity is occasionally a source of stress. But I still feel uplifted when I'm around her.

Actual age 62 (no wrinkles). Permanent age 19. I was fit; in 2nd year college; a Goldwater girl; not married. I had great dreams for my future.

Currently I live in the present; wonder where my fit body went; exercise at a fitness center; divorced; a mother of two, grandmother of six; retired (early); live with 2 dogs and a cat; blog and am politically active. I still have great dreams for my future filled with hiking and kayaking.

Born in Alabama, raised in Maryland, currently live in Georgia, I was brought up on classical music, but now enjoy country. I didn't know what NASCAR was, but now am a fan. My parents didn't own a gun, but I now own four.

I think I have morphed into a 19 year old redneck whose next car will be a 4WD truck.

I was always younger than almost all my classmates. So at 14, I was 12 (actually), although I did not then see it so. By my 20's, I admired my fellows, but wondered why they were, well, 16. Figured it might be some fault with me.

I was doing quite serious work from age 21 - fighter pilot. Seemed, with few exceptions, fellow pilots were maybe 18, no matter how good they were at the business. While I was some 40 or other. Apparantly, (maybe) they played off the dangers of our work with pretty frivilous distractions. Understood. By 30, I may have been 50+, and immersed in serious books, even more so than back in school.

Unlike most others here, I've largely never thought of myself as some permanent 'younger'. But then maybe I'm just some sort of unusual person, as in some sense we all are. Since 20-30 years ago, I might be 107, but realize that may be just projection, or something.

I have a lot of very much younger friends, who never fail to to observe that I am not 'old'. I think that is because I easily fit in with 20-30 somethings. Or maybe there is something else going on (?).

Truth is that I'm 71, long double retired, and feel my age, which keeps expanding into - well - 142 (perhaps).

The question here is an interesting one, though probably not likely to yield any sort of conclusion.

The thing is, none of us is going to get out of this life alive. So use it well, so you don't realize, at 60 or 80 that you've screwed it all up. Because that's a 'bummer'.
In any case, good luck to you all. G

I always believed, as long as I can remember, even when I got to my early thirties, that I was going to die in my early thirties. That was twenty years ago, so I guess my permanent age is the afterlife.

I think I am 19, the age when I first started working in an office. Time has stood still since then, I am trapped in Cubicle Hell forever, but I am still listening to Pink Floyd and remembering the fumbling in the dark!